The Cynical Christian

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5 Things I Learned: August 2016

1. Let us now praise the Brieftons Vertico Spiralizer: In an effort to eat healthier, we’re trying to cut down on carbs. Unfortunately, pasta is made out of carbs, and pasta appears in approximately 150% of our meals. (You haven’t lived until you’ve had Cap’n Crunch Alfredo.)

To the rescue comes the Brieftons Vertico Spiralizer, a handy little kitchen tool that turns just about any vegetable into noodles. You may ask, “If you cut zucchini into noodle shapes and put it in a pasta dish, doesn’t it still taste like zucchini, which is awful?” To my surprise as much as anyone’s, the answer is, “No, no it does not.” It actually tastes like whatever sauce and spices you use in the dish, just like pasta does.

This little wonder has opened a huge door into new dining possibilities, which hopefully will make me less fat in the process.

2. Also, did you know you can make rice out of cauliflower?You can! And it is also much better than it sounds! We had some chicken fried (cauliflower) rice, and it was great. I wouldn’t even have known it wasn’t regular rice if Rachel hadn’t told me. Another good alternative to a carb-heavy family staple. Skinny jeans, here I come!

3. My wife is a saint. A SAINT!: After all that hard innovation in the meal-planning department, Rachel was due some time off, so she and some friends took a long weekend trip to the beach. Reading between the lines, you will see that also means that I had a long weekend of sole responsibility for our kids, a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old. You can also see how this presents a problem, seeing that I am a person who frequently struggles to keep from putting both my feet in the same pants leg.

I’m already well aware of how hard my wife works, but it’s always a splash of cold water in the face to have to do what she does, event for just a few days. I’m not even saying that our kids are difficult; they aren’t. But running a household takes a lot of skills that I lack, like patience, leadership, and, frankly, cleanliness.

We survived, but just barely, on a steady diet of gummies and My Little Pony cartoons. Have I mentioned how great it is to have a family with two parents?

4. This just in: Having one kid is easier than having two kids: Our 4-year-old boy took a little vacation of his own, spending a night with my wife’s parents. This left us and our 2-year-old girl as a one-child family for the first time in, well, two years. And, man, I’m kicking myself for not appreciating how easy we had it when we just had one kid.

When you first have a child, you think, “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” You never stop to think how much harder it would be to do all the same things with a toddler hanging on to your ankles all the time. I now leave it to Jen Fulwiler to talk about how much easier it is to have five kids than six.

5. ESPN has lost me: It occurred to me recently that I, a longtime baseball fan, have absolutely no idea what’s going on this baseball season. It’s because ESPN has always been my go-to source for baseball information, but I now no longer have any desire to watch ESPN at all.

For as long as I’ve had cable TV, ESPN has been my default channel. If nothing else was on, the TV was on ESPN. But their sports coverage has now taken a backseat to using sports as an excuse for left-liberal propagandizing. Their baseball coverage has gotten worse and SportsCenter has become downright unwatchable. If I have to see another soft-focus profile of a brave transgender high school volleyball player tearing down barriers and defying the odds, I’m going to hang myself.

We’re on the cusp of another college football season, and since the Worldwide Leader pretty much has the market cornered there, I won’t be able to walk away entirely. But for ESPN to lose someone who’s been a dedicated fan for as long as I have, it says a lot about the state of the network.